Current focused ion beam techniques are capable of writing nanometer-sized features but are very slow. Existing methods for making small features consist of lithographically defining polymeric resist materials and then transferring the developed pattern into the desired underlying film or substrate by plasma etching.
State-of-the-art immersion lithography can produce features as small as 45 nm, but is complex and costly. Ion beam or electron beam proximity or projection lithography methods are capable of much finer resolution (e.g., features sized in the tens of nm), but require expensive and fragile masks. Some of the finest features may be made by electron beam writing into resist. While this method is very good for prototype devices, it is not practical for large-scale fabrication and production because the writing speed is much too slow to cover a several square centimeters chip size area in a reasonable time.
Another approach to making devices with nanometer sized features is to use self-assembled monolayers (SAMs). SAMs with micron sized feature can be delineated by lithography or stamping; while complex patterns with nanometer-size features can be fabricated with block copolymers. Unfortunately, SAMs are limited in terms of possible patterns and materials and are therefore unsuitable for large scale nanofabrication.
It is therefore desirable to circumvent the aforementioned limitations and provide a method of fabricating 2-D or 3-D shape patterns in a wide variety of materials over large areas. It is a further object of the present invention to provide a method that is largely unaffected by vibrations, thermal expansion and other alignment problems that usually plague other nanofabrication methods.